Just before dawn

Somewhere near the Texas–Mexico border


The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the sky was already glowing with the pale blue of incoming fire.


Clyde and Layla stood side by side in the tunnel’s mouth, dressed in stolen jeans and dust-covered boots. Their bags were packed. Their weapons loaded. Their hearts—steady.


Clyde tied his long hair back and winced as he adjusted the sling on his healing shoulder. Layla pulled her hoodie low over her brow, tucking a pistol into her waistband and a small revolver into her boot.


“You ready?” he asked.


Layla didn’t speak. She just reached for his hand and held it tight.


They climbed out of the tunnel and into the day that might be their last.


They barely made it five miles before the trap snapped shut.


A single drone buzzed overhead. Moments later, unmarked black SUVs appeared in the rearview mirror. Helicopters circled above like vultures.


Clyde looked over at her. “We can ditch the car. Run for it.”


“They’ll find us in ten minutes.”


“We split up?”


She turned sharply. “We don’t split. Not ever.”


He nodded. “Then we go loud.”


Layla floored the gas, weaving through a stretch of cracked road that led to a long-abandoned cotton gin. She parked the car behind the ruins, threw the bags over the fence, and took position on the roof of the old mill.


Clyde crouched beside her, shotgun in hand, his face calm. Almost peaceful.


“I love you,” he said.


She kissed him without hesitation. “Then love me through the fire.”


The first agents arrived fast. Guns drawn. Shouting orders.

FBI! GET DOWN!


Clyde answered with a single booming shot, scattering them behind a rusted-out truck.


Layla picked them off in calculated bursts — not aiming to kill, just to hold them back.


But more came. A swarm of black uniforms and body armor, shouting into radios, flanking every corner.


Clyde reloaded. Blood began soaking through his shirt again. The strain was too much.


Layla fired until her clip was empty, then ducked down and screamed, “We can’t hold ’em much longer!”


He turned to her, breathing hard. “Then we go now. Right through the middle. You and me.”


“That’s suicide.”


“No,” he said. “That’s freedom.”


They stood.


They ran.


Hand in hand, hearts pounding louder than gunfire, they charged down the path between ruin and open sky.


It was chaos.

Bullets tearing past.

The air thick with smoke and dust.

Clyde hit once in the leg.

Layla clipped in the shoulder.


But they didn’t stop.


Not until they reached the edge of the hill.


Not until the world behind them vanished into flashing lights and yelling voices.


Then — silence.


Just the sound of their own breath. The wind across dry grass. The far-off shimmer of the Rio Grande.


They dropped to their knees, exhausted, bleeding, laughing like lunatics.


“We did it,” Layla said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “We made it.”


“Ride or die,” Clyde said weakly, falling into her arms.


The news would later say:

Two suspects believed to be Clyde Kingston and Layla Monroe were killed during a shootout near the border.

No bodies were recovered.

Authorities suspect the couple may have perished in the explosion that followed.

Case closed.